sanctity of their profession, and he began to preach these doctrines in Italy and Germany; so great was his influence, that he was invited to Rome, in order to revive the republic. Innocent II., Celestine II., Lucius II., and Eugenius III., had to struggle with "the politicians," as the followers of Arnold were called, for the maintenance of their domestic power; and during this period the aggressions of popery on the rights of kings and nations were suspended. Rome set the example of resistance to the pontiffs; Italy, for a brief space, furnished the boldest opponents to the papal usurpations; but when Europe began to profit by the example, the Italians discovered that the overthrow of the papacy would diminish the profits which they derived from the payments made by superstition and ignorance to the Roman exchequer; and they lent their aid to the support of the lucrative delusion they had been the first to expose, and even yielded their liberties to the pontiffs, on condition of sharing in their unhallowed gains.

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CHAPTER VII.

THE STRUGGLE BETWEEN THE PAPAL AND IMPERIAL POWER IN THE REIGN OF FREDERIC BARBAROSSA.-THE ALBIGENSIAN WAR.

FROM A. D. 1152 TO A. D. 1187.

THE eloquence of St. Bernard roused the monarchs of France and Germany to undertake a new crusade, in consequence of the dangers to which the kingdom of Jerusalem was exposed after the capture of Edessa by Noureddin, the most powerful Moslem prince whom the crusaders had yet encountered. The Emperor Conrad, and Louis VII., led mighty armies. into Asia, but the want of conduct in the leaders, and discipline in the soldiers, the difficulties of the country, the heat of the climate, the perfidy of the Greeks, and the disunion of the Latins, proved fatal to the expedition, and the two monarchs returned to Europe, having vainly sacrificed the lives of myriads of their bravest subjects. The Emperor Conrad, anxious to make some atonement to his subjects, passed over his son, and nominated his nephew Frederic Barbarossa his successor, trusting that this young man, in whose person were united the rival claims of the Guelph and Ghibelline families, would restore the empire to its former prosperity. The Diet at Frankfort adopted the wise plans of Conrad, and Frederic I. was proclaimed.

Pope Eugenius III. entered into a close alliance with Frederic; he trusted to obtain the emperor's aid in subduing the partisans of Arnold, who had formed the insane project of restoring the old Roman republic. Frederic soon performed his part of the treaty, and Eugenius had leisure to complete the union of the Irish Church to the papacy. He sent a legate to Ireland, who established four metropolitan sees in the island, and bestowed the pall, the Romish symbol of investiture, on the new archbishops. The attempts of the Byzantine emperor, Manuel Comnenus, to recover the Italian provinces that formed the ancient exarchate, drew Eugenius and Frederic into closer alliance, but their harmony was soon interrupted by the revival of the question of investitures. Frederic conferred the archbishopric of Magdeburgh on one of his favourites; the pope angrily remonstrated, the emperor persevered; excommunications were prepared on one side, armies levied on the other, when the death of Eugenius adjourned the contest.

Anastasius IV. only appeared on the pontifical throne to grant extensive privileges to the military order of the Hospitallers, or Knights of St. John of Jerusalem. This order was originally a charitable institution for the relief of the poor pilgrims who visited Jerusalem; they subsequently undertook the defence of the roads that led to the Holy Sepulchre, and gradually assumed a military organization. Their order, subsequently enriched by mistaken piety, be

came equally remarkable for its bravery, wealth, and profligacy. Anastasius permitted Frederic's nominee to retain the archbishopric of Magdeburgh, and the reproaches of the cardinals for this dereliction of the papal claims is said to have hastened his end.

Nicholas Breakspear, an Englishman by birth, was elected to the papacy, by the title of Adrian IV., at a time when the partisans of Arnold were complete masters of Rome. The emperor and the pope were equally interested in suppressing the republican party; Frederic led an army into Italy, and Adrian placed Rome under an interdict. Arnold fled, but he was arrested by the emperor, and delivered to the ecclesiastical power. After the mockery of a trial, this daring reformer was sentenced to be burned alive as a heretic and a traitor. The Romans, as if roused by the sight of his funeral pile, took arms to dispute for his ashes as relics, and his memory was long revered by the giddy populace.

But Adrian, though gratified by the surrender of Arnold, was not disposed to trust implicitly to the professions of Frederic, and the emperor was secretly annoyed by the extravagant pretensions of the pontiff. Though the pope was conscious that he could not compete with the monarch, he would not resign his pretensions to superiority, and when he visited the German camp, he refused to give Frederic the kiss of peace, because the emperor had declined to hold the stirrup of his horse! Frederic, after some hesitation, agreed to gratify the egregious

vanity of the pontiff, and performed this degrading ceremony in the presence of his whole army.

Adrian now consented to perform the coronation of the emperor; but the Roman citizens, enraged at the contempt with which their claims were treated, raised a formidable insurrection, and murdered several bishops. Frederic attacked the disorderly mob, slew more than a thousand of the revolters, and then went to the cathedral to receive the golden crown. A pestilence soon after destroyed so many of the imperialists, that both the pope and the emperor deemed it prudent to abandon Rome; so that the solemnity of the coronation was generally regarded as a useless butchery.

Shortly after this transaction, Adrian received an important application from Henry Plantagenet, King of England, which led to a remarkable assertion of the papal right to bestow kingdoms and empires. It deserves our attention, both as a memorable example of the usurping spirit of popery, and as the origin of the connexion between Great Britain and Ireland. We have already mentioned that the Irish Church was first united to the Romish see by the exertions of St. Malachi; the claims of the prelates to exclusive privileges were resisted by the native Irish princes and the inferior clergy, who appear to have been strongly attached to their ancient institutions. Henry, encouraged by the

descendants of the Danes who had settled in Ireland, and solicited by the ambitious prelates, resolved